Posts Tagged ‘Strait of Hormuz’

Joe Biden mocked a lot of things in his debate Thursday night. He mocked Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney, of course. But he also began to grin like the village idiot pretty much every time Paul Ryan began an answer, as if to point out that the world’s most intolerant lunatics can’t emotionally handle a different opinion in any way, shape or form.

And it’s a classic comparison: I don’t know how Jack Torrance (Nicholson’s character in the movie) would have debated any differently than Biden if he wasn’t allowed to take his axe to the debate. In fact, I’ll bet Jack Torrance would have been slightly more polite than Joe Biden, and refrained from interrupting Paul Ryan 85 times the way Biden did.

I have a feeling that many women put themselves in Paul Ryan’s shoes and saw Joe Biden as an overbearing, domineering, patronizing rat bastard who would mock them and denigrate them and smirk while a woman was talking so that everybody would know he thought she was an idiot. And they didn’t like it. And that debate performance may hurt Obama more than a lot of people realize right now for the very reason that it emotionally turned off the very women voters that Obama is most counting upon.

A female Republican pollster on Huckabee’s program pointed out that Obama and Biden actually depicted the two kinds of men women most loathe: Obama as the passive, uncaring, uninvolved man who couldn’t even generate the emotional energy to manufacture a little bit of eye contact; and Biden as the overbearing, loutish, patronizing, dismissive blowhard.

That said, one of the things that Joe Biden mocked was Iran getting a nuclear weapon. It was frankly amazing how dismissive he was of what pretty much every expert in the field says is a frighteningly real possibility.

But those who dismiss Iran’s capability are as stupid as those who dismiss their resolve.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that an Iranian engineer has told a reported what we suspected: That they hijacked the drone and fooled it into landing in Iran. The fact that it landed intact seemed suspicious. But how could they have defeated the super power that spends more on it’s military than the rest of the world combined?

Simple: They jammed the control signals forcing it into autopilot mode, then overrode the GPS signals to fool it into landing in Iran.

Iranian electronic warfare specialists were able to cut off communications links of the American bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel, says the engineer, who works for one of many Iranian military and civilian teams currently trying to unravel the drone’s stealth and intelligence secrets, and who could not be named for his safety.Using knowledge gleaned from previous downed American drones and a technique proudly claimed by Iranian commanders in September, the Iranian specialists then reconfigured the drone’s GPS coordinates to make it land in Iran at what the drone thought was its actual home base in Afghanistan.

The article goes on to say that the US will continue to fly over Iran. But based on this information it seems likely that future flights will meet a similar fate.

This seems like a huge vulnerability. Makes one wonder if a big chunk of our military budget has been wasted.

What you need to understand is the Obama administration talking heads and the intelligence and military brass that serve at Obama’s pleasure basically said at the time Obama lost one of his drones over Iran that there was no way in hell Iran had the capability to comandeer a drone and the thing must have crash landed.

US officials skeptical of Iran’s capabilities blame a malfunction, but so far can’t explain how Iran acquired the drone intact. One American analyst ridiculed Iran’s capability, telling Defense News that the loss was “like dropping a Ferrari into an ox-cart technology culture.”

Yet Iran’s claims to the contrary resonate more in light of new details about how it brought down the drone – and other markers that signal growing electronic expertise.

A former senior Iranian official who asked not to be named said: “There are a lot of human resources in Iran…. Iran is not like Pakistan.”

“Technologically, our distance from the Americans, the Zionists, and other advanced countries is not so far to make the downing of this plane seem like a dream for us … but it could be amazing for others,” deputy IRGC commander Gen. Hossein Salami said this week.

According to a European intelligence source, Iran shocked Western intelligence agencies in a previously unreported incident that took place sometime in the past two years, when it managed to “blind” a CIA spy satellite by “aiming a laser burst quite accurately.”

More recently, Iran was able to hack Google security certificates, says the engineer. In September, the Google accounts of 300,000 Iranians were made accessible by hackers. The targeted company said “circumstantial evidence” pointed to a “state-driven attack” coming from Iran, meant to snoop on users.

Well, guess what that “ox-cart technology culture” did with the Ferrari Obama gave them?

Now, if you are a complete and abject fool the way Joe Biden and Barack Obama are complete abject fools, then you will keep dreaming your naive fool’s dream that Iran is a bunch of technological retards who are actually being cowed out of their holy war by some stupid sanctions.

If you’ve got a functioning brain in your head, you won’t think that way at all.

Experts say Iran is very close to having a nuclear bomb, as USA Today back in November of LAST YEAR pointed out:

There’s time for stricter sanctions to get Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program, but the Islamic republic is much closer to such weapons than previously believed and a military strike may be necessary, foreign policy experts say.

“With each time we have used sanctions, they’ve had more impact, but ultimately if Iran wants to pay the cost, it can get nuclear weapons,” says Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The question is, can we raise the cost enough?”

Western diplomats and nuclear experts who reviewed intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program say Iran has continued work on nuclear weapons with the help of foreign scientists, despite sanctions organized by the Obama administration, a report in The Washington Post said.

Iran IS close to a nuclear weapon. And for Joe Biden to smirk and mock like the damned fool he is was just one of the numerous examples of Biden not only mocking, but doing so at incredibly inappropriate times.

I have pointed out REPEATEDLY that when Iran gets a nuclear bomb in will be ENTIRELYDemocrats’ faults and particularly Obama’s and Biden’s fault. You can go back to the 2008 debates for the Democrat presidential nomination and you can see every Democrat mocking George Bush for saying that Iran was a growing nuclear threat. They dismissed it and mocked it and cited a report that turned out to be completely false and Iran has been the little nuclear bomb-making engine that could on Obama’s watch.

Another development is almost as bad. When Iran gets the nuclear bomb – and if Obama is reelected I guarantee you that Iran will get the bomb – they will not have to use it directly to hurt us badly.

Once Iran becomes a nuclear power with the bomb and the means to deliver it, they will be off-limits to any kind of attack. It will be not only too late, but WAY too late to deal with the threat they pose. And one of the things they will be able to do is block the Strait of Hormuz – and send oil prices to $12 a gallon – with absolute impunity.

A new ‘smart missile’ threatens to tip the balance of power towards China, US military analysts say.

The latest generation of the Dong Feng 21D (DF-21D) [Photo] is a supercarrier killer according to experts on China’s armaments. The missile can be launched from land and strike an aircraft carrier 900 miles away.

China has 11,200 miles of coastline. That fact coupled with the range and accuracy of the new missile could spell doom for any US or allied carrier fleet.

Patrick Cronin, a senior director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program that is part of the Washington, DC Center for a New American Security organization admits the DF 21D is designed to kill carriers—specifically US Naval carriers. “The Navy has long had to fear carrier—killing capabilities. The emerging Chinese anti-ship missile capability, and in particular the DF 21D, represents the first post—Cold War capability that is both potentially capable of stopping our naval power projection and deliberately designed for that purpose.”

China and Iran are allies.

If we try to end a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, will we be surprised to find out that China has given Iran a few aircraft carrier killers?

Joe Biden smirked and mocked his way through the debate. But this is a terrifyingly real possibility that is no laughing matter to anybody but the most deluded of fools.

Unless Iran is told – AND UNLESS IRAN BELIEVES- that the United States will launch a massive military strike that will wipe out Iran’s nuclear capability and as many damned Iranians as get in the way of our wiping it out, they will soon have a nuclear bomb.

And you can read all about the war that the Bible told us would happen in the Book of Revelation.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs would not say Tuesday if the Obama administration considers Afghan President Hamid Karzai an ally.

Gibbs criticized the Afghan president after Karzai took a shot at Western leaders and the United Nations for election fraud in his country during last year’s presidential contest.

Administration officials said Tuesday that they will continue to “evaluate” remarks made by Karzai, and that the evaluation could result in Karzai’s May invitation to the White House being revoked.

President Barack Obama extended an invitation for Karzai to visit the White House on May 12, but that could be in jeopardy if Karzai continues to make “troubling and untruthful” comments.

Asked at the daily press briefing if the U.S. considers Karzai an ally, Gibbs said “Karzai is the democratically elected leader of Afghanistan.”

Pressed on the issue, Gibbs said that “the remarks he’s made I can’t imagine that anyone in this country found them anything other than troubling…when the Afghan leaders take steps to improve governance and root out corruption, then the president will say kind words.”

Gibbs added that the administration will continue to use “stern language” with Karzai if it doesn’t take steps to root out corruption and questioned the rationale behind Karzai’s controversial statements.

“Whether there’s some domestic political benefit that he’s trying to gain, I can’t say,” Gibbs said.

So Karzai defends his country’s elections, and his own political credibility, from foreign attacks and demagoguery, and as a result Obama snubs him in what seems like a rather petty emotional response.

Given that Obama is becoming unglued over Karzai defending himself over attacks regarding the legitimacy of his election, it would be interesting if we could see how Obama would handle attacks over the legitimacy of his election.

In any event, things aren’t going so well when we have hundreds of thousands of troops fighting in a country while our president openly doubts whether the leader of said country is an ally.

That was the first thing that went truly, truly wrong in Vietnam, you know.

How’s Obama doing in Iran? Really, really bad. It has become abundantly obvious that Iran WILL have nuclear weapons under Obama’s watch.

And what is Obama’s reaction to this intolerable and incredibly dangerous development? Try acceptance.

I know, I know. Iran was supposed to reflect upon the sheer, transcendent wonderfulness of Obama, and agree that Obama’s empty words really were more important than reality, and abandon it’s nuclear weapons program. But somehow something went wrong in Obama’s calculation that Iran and the ayatollahs would decide to embrace Obama’s narcissism.

In another August 2008 article predicting that “President Obama” equaled “nuclear Iran,” I wrote:

This is the question that will effect – and possibly haunt – American foreign policy for generations to come.

If we elect Barack Obama, we are tacitly choosing to allow Iran to develop the bomb. Any of his tough-sounding rhetoric aside, you need to realize that Barack Obama has already repeatedly philosophically condemned the very same sort of preemptive attack that would be necessary to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Heck, I can go back to April 2008, when I was already explaining why electing either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton over John McCain guaranteed a nuclear-armed Iran.

When Iran obtains nuclear weapons, the world will dramatically change. We will not be able to control this rogue terrorist nation – a nation with a radically apocalyptic view of the world – which has repeatedly threatened to “wipe Israel off the map.” When Iran develops the bomb, they will be able to block the Strait of Hormuz and shut off the oil supply, skyrocketing gasoline prices to over $14 a gallon. When Iran gets nukes, it will be able to launch a global terrorist jihad without fear of being attacked. When Iran has the bomb, it will result in a nuclear-arms race in the craziest region in the history of the world.

Ultimate Armageddon will be guaranteed when Iran gets the bomb. And it will get the bomb because of Barack Hussein Obama.

How about Iraq? Well, things are hardly looking up there under Obama, either.

A few weeks ago, Joe Biden was ridiculously asserting that Iraq “could be one of the great achievements of this administration.” What was asinine about that statement was that it utterly ignored the Bush administration, that deserves all the credit, and instead assign credit to two men who foolishly tried to undercut everything that Bush did which led to the success we attained in Iraq.

But things were clearly going well in Iraq, such that Joe Biden tried to steal credit for it.

BAGHDAD — Deadly blasts shook Baghdad for the second time in three days on Tuesday, deepening fears of a new outbreak of insurgent and sectarian violence.

At least seven bombings of residential areas of the Iraqi capital, both Shiite and Sunni, killed 35 people and wounded more than 140. The violence came against a backdrop of continuing political instability after March 7 parliamentary elections left no single group able to form a government, forcing a scramble to form coalitions.

A similar political void after the 2005 parliamentary vote preceded Iraq’s bloody sectarian warfare of 2006 and 2007, from which the country has only begun to emerge.

There are also new concerns that Iraq’s army and police may drift back into sectarianism.

It’s logically impossible for the Obama administration to one day say Iraq will be one of their “greatest achievements,” and the next day blame Bush for the failure of Iraq. That said, I guarantee you that that is precisely what Obama will try to do if Iraq turns sour on him.

ALLAWI: The process of democracy where you would have a stable Iraq is being hijacked. And because it’s being hijacked, it’s going to throw this country into violence. And once this country is thrown again into violence as before, then this will spill over to the region and vice versa. Problems around the region will be transferred here also.

I bold and red-font the statements that it is “being” hijacked. It is something that is beginning to happen just now. And Iraq is being “thrown again into violence as before.” Obama can’t blame Bush for this increasing violence. He can only blame himself (not that he ever actually WILL blame himself).

We are beginning to escalate our withdrawal out of Iraq, and lo and behold, the Islamic jihadists are determined to make it appear as though we are withdrawing with our tails between our legs. They are also making it rather obvious that when we leave, they will be present to fill the newly created vacuum with their poisonous presence.

Allawi is pleading with the United States to discontinue the timetable for withdrawal and remain through this difficult period. But the report by correspondent Dominic Di-Natale concludes by saying, “Ayad Allawi’s call for a troop withdrawal suspension will fall on deaf ears for the time being even if it is a serious plea for help. ”

One of the fears is that Obama is tunnel-vision focused on getting the hell out of Iraq, and is ignoring the delicate state-of-affairs there.

So how’s Obama doing in Afghanistan, in Iran, and in Iraq? Pretty darn horrendously.

An article that encapsulates the Obama disaster of a foreign policy is “The Karzai Fiasco” by the Wall Street Journal.

There’s a joke that goes, “What do you call a million attorneys at the bottom of the ocean? A good start.” Well, Bill Clinton proved himself to be such a weasel that he wasn’t even fit to pursue the weasel’s favorite profession.

Well, the meaning is considerably more clear with Bill’s wife’s repeated usage of participles. As in, “Iran isbecoming a military dictatorship”; as in “Iran issliding into a military dictatorship”; as in “an ever-dimming outlook for persuading Iran”; as in “Iran is increasingly dominated by the Revolutionary Guard Corps”; as in this increasing decision-making (by the Revolutionary Guard)”; as in “in effect supplanting the government of Iran.”

As in, words and their tenses are actually important. All this “becoming” and “sliding” and “ever-dimming” and “supplanting” is in the tense of the present active participle. Which is to say that it didn’t occur in the past while George Bush was president; it is something that is happening right now, under the failed presidency and the failed foreign policy of Barack Obama.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday Iran is sliding into a military dictatorship, a new assessment suggesting a rockier road ahead for U.S.-led efforts to stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

As the first high-level Obama administration official to make such an accusation, Clinton was reflecting an ever-dimming outlook for persuading Iran to negotiate limits on its nuclear program, which it has insisted is intended only for peaceful purposes. The U.S. and others — including the two Gulf countries Clinton visited Sunday and Monday — believe Iran is headed for a nuclear bomb capability. […]

Earlier in the day, in Doha, Qatar, Clinton spoke bluntly about Iranian behavior and what she called the Obama administration’s view of Iran as increasingly dominated by the Revolutionary Guard Corps. […]

The Revolutionary Guard has long been a pillar of Iran’s regime as a force separate from the ordinary armed forces. The Guard now has a hand in every critical area, including missile development, oil resources, dam building, road construction, telecommunications and nuclear technology.

It also has absorbed the paramilitary Basij as a full-fledged part of its command structure — giving the militia greater funding and a stronger presence in Iran’s internal politics.

“The evidence we’ve seen of this increasing decision-making (by the Revolutionary Guard) cuts across all areas of Iranian security policy, and certainly nuclear policy is at the core of it,” Clinton told reporters flying with her from Doha to Saudi Arabia.

Asked if the U.S. was planning a military attack on Iran, Clinton said “no.”

The United States is focused on gaining international support for sanctions “that will be particularly aimed at those enterprises controlled by the Revolutionary Guard, which we believe is in effect supplanting the government of Iran,” she said. […]

Private U.S. experts on the Iranian regime said they agreed with Clinton’s assessment of Iran’s drift toward military dominance.

“When you rely on the power of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to remain in power it is only a matter of time before the regime becomes a paramilitary dictatorship — and it is about time we realize this,” Iranian-born Fariborz Ghadar, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an e-mail to The AP. He said the current regime is “beholden to the Revolutionary Guard for its survival.”

Ray Takeyh, a former administration adviser on Iran who now follows Iranian developments from the private Council on Foreign Relations, said by e-mail, “The Revolutionary Guards are increasingly represented in all aspects of governance.”

Clinton told reporters it appears the Revolutionary Guard is in charge of Iran’s controversial nuclear program and the country changing course “depends on whether the clerical and political leadership begin to reassert themselves.”

She added: “I’m not predicting what will happen but I think the trend with this greater and greater military lock on leadership decisions should be disturbing to Iranians as well as those of us on the outside.”

Clinton said the Iran that could emerge is “a far cry from the Islamic Republic that had elections and different points of view within the leadership circle. That is part of the reason that we are so concerned with what we are seeing going on there.”

In her Doha appearance, Clinton also said she foresees a possible breakthrough soon in stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

“I’m hopeful that this year will see the commencement of serious negotiations that will cover every issue that is outstanding,” she said, adding that “everyone is anticipating” progress after more than a year of impasse between the negotiating parties. […]

And we have a clue as to how “hopey changey” relates to Obama foreign policy:

From Secretary Clinton: “I’m hopeful that this year will see the commencement of serious negotiations that will cover every issue that is outstanding,” she said, adding that “everyone is anticipating” progress after more than a year of impasse between the negotiating parties.

We have Vice President Biden: “Referring to U.S.-led effort to force new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, Biden told Meet the Press on Sunday that he hoped to recruit China’s support to the campaign.”

We have JCS Chairman Admiral Mullen: “He added that he still hoped a solution could be found through diplomacy and sanctions, and that there would not be a regional war.”

I am personally very hopeful that magic unicorns will fly over Iran and melt the mullahs’ heart with their rainbow sprinkles. And my hope for change is no less ridiculous than the three above.

2) Invade Israel with their nuclear weapons as a protective shield against Israel’s “Samson option.” Iran would have numerous Islamic allies to attack with them.

3) Shut down the Strait of Hormuz and send oil prices (and therefore the cost of just about everything else that requires energy to produce) into the stratosphere.

4) Massively increase global terrorism with impunity. If Iranian-trained or based jihadists manage another massive 9/11, what will we do if going to war will mean the destruction of several U.S. cities and millions of dead Americans?

A President John McCain can assure the Iranians, “We attacked Iraq when we believed they represented a threat to us, and we will do the same to you. You seriously might want to rethink your plans.” A President John McCain can say to Sunni Arab states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, “We have stood by Iraq even when it was difficult, and we will do the same for you. You don’t need those weapons; the United States will be there for you.”

Barack Obama can’t do any of that. He won’t go to war with Iran to stop their nuclear weapons program (did you notice Hillary Clinton’s “NO” to the question whether the US was planning any sort of attack?). He can’t assure Arab allies that they can completely count on him to protect them. And he is therefore completely powerless and completely useless.

“DES MOINES — Democratic presidential candidates teamed up during a National Public Radio debate here Tuesday to blast the Bush administration over its policy toward Iran, arguing that a new intelligence assessment proves that the administration has needlessly ratcheted up military rhetoric.

While the candidates differed somewhat over the level of threat Iran poses in the Mideast, most of themsought to liken the administration’s approach to Iran with its buildup to the war in Iraq.”

George Bush believed Iran was a threat that needed to be confronted. Democrats like Barack Obama shrilly screamed him down. This is therefore genuinely Barry Hussein’s mess, and it has become increasingly obvious that doesn’t have the stones to handle it.

America’s failure to wisely choose its 44th president leaves us in the greatest crisis we have ever known, both domestically and internationally.

And when the fecal matter hits the rotary oscillator, there won’t be anybody to bail us out.

As morally evil as the Iranian regime is, I have to hand it to them: they have been playing a naive and appeasing Barack Obama the way a master violinist plays a Stradivarius. At every single turn, they have fooled him, blocked him, tricked him, or stalled him while they have just continued feverishly working on developing a full-blown nuclear capability.

And now here we are, on the verge of a truly dark and terrible development in world history:

WASHINGTON – Iran’s launch of a satellite into orbit last week will likely give U.S. and European leaders greater cause for concern that the Islamic republic is approaching the ability to field long-range ballistic missiles while its nuclear program continues to progress, analysts here agreed.

The Iranian government-sponsored Islamic Republic News Agency reported Feb. 3 that Iran had launched a research satellite called Omid into orbit aboard a Safir-2 rocket. This is Iran’s first domestically produced satellite to reach orbit and the first to successfully launch on an Iranian-built launch vehicle, according to Press TV, an Iranian government-sponsored news outlet.

The U.S. government, while not explicitly confirming Iran has launched a satellite, has expressed concern that Iran’s development of a space launch vehicle establishes the technical basis to develop long-range ballistic missile systems.

“Iran’s ongoing efforts to develop its missile delivery capabilities remain a matter of deep concern,” U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood said in a Feb. 3 statement. “Many of the technological building blocks involved in [space launch vehicles] are the same as those required to develop long-range ballistic missiles. … We will continue with our friends and allies in the region to address the threats posed by Iran, including those related to its missile and nuclear programs and its support of terrorism.”

Satellite watchers using orbital data provided from U.S. Strategic Command’s space surveillance network said the satellite is in an elliptical orbit that ranges from 242 kilometers to 382 kilometers in altitude, at an inclination of 55 degrees relative to the equator. Ted Molczan, an amateur satellite observer, said the satellite and part of the rocket that took it to space are both cataloged by Strategic Command and in similar orbits. The satellite appears to be tumbling, as its brightness in the sky changes rapidly, indicating the satellite’s likely lack of a stabilization or attitude control system. Both the satellite and rocket body are likely to begin to deorbit this summer, Molczan said.

“Dear people of Iran, your children have sent Iran’s first domestic satellite into orbit,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Press TV. “May this be a step toward justice and peace. Iran’s official presence in space has been added to the pages of history.”

Meanwhile, Iran continues to develop its nuclear program, which it says it has the right to develop for peaceful civil uses as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Iran argues it needs nuclear power and will not use the technology to make weapons. The United Nations Security Council, which includes permanent members China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and the United States, has urged Iran to suspend the program numerous times to no avail.

“This [Iranian satellite launch] I think highlights the dual-use issue again, just as the nuclear issue does, and that is technology can be used for peaceful purposes or for weapons that can threaten other countries,” said Ted Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, a think tank here. “In terms of any kind of direct missile threat [to the United States], it’s likely to be many years before they could have that capability. The people worrying more are others in the Middle East and Europe.”

Carpenter said perhaps even more unsettling than the Iranian satellite launch are recent media reports that North Korea is again preparing to launch its three-stage Taepodong-2 missile, which some believe will have the range to reach U.S. territory. North Korea tested one of these missiles in 2006, but it failed shortly after launch and broke apart in the air.

“North Korea poses a much more direct threat to the United States because if it is true North Korea is planning to test an advanced version of the Taepodong-2, that could put Alaska and the U.S. west coast in range,” Carpenter said.

Thomas Donnelly, a defense and security policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, said the United States and Europe ought to be concerned about the progression of Iranian technology. He argued that Iran is more of a threat to the United States than North Korea, based on Tehran’s backing of insurgents in Iraq.

“That has been a capability we have seen Iran developing, but the fact that it now has actually happened is a jarring punctuation mark,”Donnelly said. “Given what we believe about their nuclear program, it seems pretty clear they’re very close to having a complete, deliverable weapon that would have the ability to reach out to Europe.”

Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution here, said though the Iranian satellite launch may not show an increase in the physical range of Iranian weapon systems, it is perhaps a more impressive display of technological prowess than a missile test launch would have been.

“That suggests a certain amount of control and guidance mastery,” O’Hanlon said. “You’ve got to hit a fairly narrow band to put something in orbit, and the simple act of firing a missile doesn’t tell you anything about how close the missile landed to its target.

“It demonstrates more sophistication than I would have assumed, but I am not surprised they did this.”

Too few Americans (and for that matter Europeans) comprehend the magnitude of this development.

If Iran has nuclear weapons – and particularly if they have an intercontinental ballistic missile delivery system – they will be immune to attack. Do you believe that Barack Obama would attack a nuclear-armed Iran? I submit that Obama won’t dare attack a NON-nuclear armed Iran. And no American president would attack a nation at the cost of one or more major U.S. cities.

If Iran gets its nukes, it will be able to do a number of things: 1) attack Israel, assuring Israel that if it uses its nukes against Iran, Iran will use its nukes against Israel; 2) shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which would immediately drive up oil. The cost of gasoline in the U.S. would soar above $15 a gallon; 3) dramatically increase Iranian-sponsored terrorism worldwide.

If you don’t believe that a nuclear-armed Iran would pick a minimum of one of these options, you’re just nuts.

What we are seeing with Iran developing nuclear weapons and the means to project them is akin to the armament of Nazi Germany during the 1930s. Many immediately recognized the threat the Nazis posed, but those in leadership were appeasing weaklings who were more interested in “transforming” their own societies than they were confronting genuine evil abroad. The result was the Holocaust and the meat-grinder of World War II.

Democrats who are demagogues at heart will assert that George Bush allowed Iran to develop nuclear weapons as will. They are liars: George Bush TRIED to persuade the U.S. to strongly confront Iran, and Democrats in Congress shrilly attacked him for his prescient knowledge of the Iranian threat. Democrats claimed that Iran had suspended its nuclear program, and that the regime no longer posed a threat. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

Finally, the dilemma of the Iranian nuclear program serves as a sober reinforcement of the rightness of President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. As with Iraq, we have in Iran a closed, totalitarian society that our intelligence cannot reliably penetrate. How will we know for sure when and if Iran develops nuclear weapons? Do we simply choose to allow them to do so? Are we willing to suffer the consequences of the world’s largest terrorist state and supporter of terrorism to have nukes? Are we willing to give President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – who has publicly described his belief in an apocalyptic figure known as the “Twelfth Imam” who will come into the world via an act of global catastrophe – a nuclear trigger to place his finger upon? Are we willing to put nuclear weapons into the hands of someone who has repeatedly vowed to “wipe Israel off the map“?

If Iran gets nuclear weapons, you can pretty much figure that World War III is coming soon. For one thing, the country is led by apocalyptic religious fanatics who will likely either use the bomb to attack Israel, or else will smuggle it into the hands of terrorists who will do the job for them. For another, a nuclear weapon in Shiite Iran will trigger a nuclear arms race in the craziest region in the history of the world, as Sunni states feverishly work to build their own bomb to balance the power.

Meanwhile, we find both Democratic presidential candidates vocalizing longstanding opposition to the Iraq war, and promising a swift pullout if elected. The question is this: how can a president who claimed that the United States was wrong in attacking Iraq over legitimate concerns that it possessed weapons of mass destruction proceed to threaten to attack Iran over legitimate concerns that IT possesses nuclear weapons? And conversely, as the United States attempts to prevent Sunni Arab nations from developing their own nuclear weapons programs to balance Shiite Iran, how will a president – who refused to honor the American commitment to stand by Iraq – proceed to succeed in convincing Sunni countries that we will stand by them against any threat posed by Iran?

If we say that the United States was wrong to attack Iraq, then we tacitly affirm that it will be wrong to attack Iran even as it feverishly works on creating enough centrifuges to have the type of refined uranium it needs for one and only one purpose.

There was a process that the United Nations ostensibly provided by which two nations in material disagreement could come to a fair resolution. But what should have been an honest process was interfered with and corrupted by powerful member nations and by the United Nations itself. If we are going to blame anyone for the invasion, then let us blame countries like France and Russia, as well as the corrupt and grossly incompetent and negligent United Nations. They made it impossible for any just solution to prevail. In Saddam Hussein’s own words and thoughts, their protection and interference gave him the idea that he could defy the United States and keep the inspectors at bay without any meaningful consequence.

Those same countries are now protecting Iran the SAME exact way. They are opposing sanctions and resolutions against Iran the SAME WAY they did against Iraq. Since both countries are permanent veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council, they can absolutely shield Iran from ANY resolution as they choose. And Barack Obama would have no choice but to go it alone if he wants to stop Iran’s nuclear program the same way Bush had to choose to go it alone.

But Obama WON’T DO THAT. Which means Iran will have its nuclear capability during his watch.

I hoped I would find a more or less complete assemblage of all the attempted terror attacks on U.S. soil that we’ve experienced since Obama came to office promising to end terrorism with his sheer exalted wonderfulness.

It wasn’t easy. List like this one are far and few between. I had to go back and stumble across a few names based on some attacks I remembered, and start entering search terms.

The media have clearly dropped the ball in keeping track of Obama’s “success” in dealing with this very real threat.

Barack Obama refused to even use the word “terrorism,” instead calling terrorist attacks “man-caused disasters.” Whereas George Bush took terrorism seriously and went to war to take on those who would kill Americans wherever they were, Barack Obama decided that there was no war, and renamed it an “overseas contingency operation.”

I provided all the html links, and added a couple of comments in brackets.

Despite the hope and change brought along with a new administration, Americans discovered in 2009 that the threat of terrorism remained. There were several near disasters this last year along with a couple of actual man-caused disasters. While creating the following list I was surprised by the large number of arrests on American soil. I assume my surprise is due to the fact that the media generally forgets about these incidents within a very short period of time and does not make any attempt to report them as another piece of a larger puzzle.

- On May 20, 2009 three U.S. citizens (James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams) and one Haitian (Laguerre Payen) from Newburgh, New York were arrested in a plot to blow up two synagogues in the Riverdale community of the Bronx. The men allegedly placed bombs wired to cell phones in three separate cars outside the Riverdale Temple and nearby Riverdale Jewish Center. It was also alleged that they planed to shoot down military planes operating out of Stewart Air National Guard Base. Both the car bombs and the missiles were actually fakes given to the plotters with the help of an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. [It is also important to note that all three were black converts to Islam radicalized while in the prison system].

- On June 1, 2009 an assailant opened fire on a United States military recruiting office in Little Rock, Arkansas. Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, an American who had converted to Islam, was accused of killing Private William Long. According to law enforcement officials, Muhammad had conducted research on other targets, including military sites, government facilities and Jewish institutions throughout the country. [Note: a successful terror attack].

- On July 27, 2009seven men were arrested in North Carolina and charged with plotting to wage “violent jihad” outside the United States. Daniel Patrick Boyd, who authorities allege was the ringleader of a group of men that trained in North Carolina, was later also charged with planning to attack the U.S. Marine base at Quantico, Virginia. Boyd and another man, Hysen Sherifi, were charged with conspiring to murder U.S. military personnel.

- On September 14, 2009 Law enforcement agents raided residences in New York City and later that day briefed members of Congress about their terrorism investigation. Authorities found 14 new black backpacks during the raids fueling concern the plan may have been to use them with suicide bombs. Najibullah Zazi and his father Mohammed Zazi were arrested five days later at Najibullah’s home in Denver, Colorado. FBI agents also arrested Ahmad Wais Afzali in New York. Najibullah Zazi, linked by authorities to al Qaeda, was charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.

- On September 23, 2009Michael Finton, a 29-year-old convert to Islam who went by the name Talib Islam, was arrested in an alleged plot to blow up a federal building in Illinois. Finton drove a van containing what he thought was explosive material and parked it directly in front of the northwest corner of the Paul Findley Federal Building, a courthouse in Illinois. He attempted to detonate it remotely but the explosive was actually harmless, supplied to Islam by the FBI.

- On September 24, 2009Hosam Maher Husein Smadi was arrested after he placed and attempted to detonate what he believed to be a car bomb in the garage of the 60-story Fountain Place office tower in Dallas. The fake explosive was given to him by an undercover FBI agent.

- On October 21, 2009Tarek Mehanna, a Boston area man who lived with his parents and wrote a blog about Islam, was arrested for conspiring to become a jihadist and kill Americans. His alleged plots – all failed – included the assassination of prominent politicians, attacking US troops in Iraq and shooting randomly in a unidentified shopping mall.

- On November 5, 2009 a gunman killed 14 people (including one unborn baby) and wounded 30 others at the Fort Hood military base located near Killeen, Texas. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the only suspect in the crime, was radicalized by Muslim ideology. A muslim cleric said Hasan asked him in a December 2008 e-mail “whether killing American soldiers and officers is lawful or not” under Islamic law. [There’s your second successful terrorist attack].

- On December 25, 2009 a Nigerian man named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to detonate the explosive PETN on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. An apparent malfunction in the device and the quick reaction of passengers saved the airplane and 278 lives on board. After being taken into custody, Abdulmutallab told authorities he had been directed by al-Qaeda.

If the media were looking for a theme, as they always do this time of year, 2009 could be called the “Year of the Home Grown Terrorist” as six of those arrested (James Cromitie, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, Daniel Patrick Boyd, Michael Finton, Tarek Mehanna, and Nidal Malik Hasan) were born right here in the United States.

When George Bush took office, there was absolutely no program in place to keep America safe. There were dozens of al Qaeda terrorist attacks against US targets, and Clinton did nothing nothing. The USS Cole was attacked by al Qaeda in Yemen in October 2000 during the waning days of the Clinton administration, with 17 American sailors killed, and Clinton swept it under the rug to create the illusion of a “clean slate.”

And George Bush, naively “looking forward, not backward,” attitude, failed to do anything to change our lack of protection under that terrible day seven months into his presidency.

Bush woke up fast. And with fury and determination unlike anything this country has seen since the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, the Bush administration devised a successful system to keep this country safe.

Barack Obama, taking incredibly foolish attitude that terrorism was merely a crime that he could stop with what amounted to a personality cult based on his own wonderfulness, systematically dismantled many of the Bush protections even as he apologized for America’s efforts to keep its citizens safe.

One of the most important things Bush did was to dismantle the wall that the Clinton administration erected preventing the CIA and the FBI from communicating with one another. Liberals want to maintain that the Clinton policy did not change the law, but merely clarified it. But the fact remains that the Clinton administration strengthened the communications barrier when he should have been encouraging intelligence-sharing between our security agencies.

We had a wall separating intelligence agencies into separate and disconnected fiefdoms prior to 9/11.

WASHINGTON — The scapegoat emerging from the Sept. 11 commission inquiry isn’t an elected official or agency but an obscure government policy that came to be known as “the wall.”

On Tuesday, as FBI, CIA and Justice Department officials continued to point the finger of blame at one another, they all seemed to agree that the wall was the overarching villain. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, for one, described it as “the single greatest structural cause for Sept. 11.”

In other words, Obama decided to surround himself with the men who – out of liberal notions antagonistic to a strong intelligence community – built/strengthened the wall.

Obama selected Leon Panetta, another Clinton political hack, and a man who had absolutely no intelligence experience to qualify for leadership, to run the CIA. And then he selected Janet Napolitano, again an unqualified selection with absolutely no intelligence experience whatsoever, to run Homeland Security.

The White House, according to the source, is in full defensive spin mode. Other administration sources also say a flurry of memos were generated on December 26th, 27th, and 28th, which developed talking points about how Obama’s decision to effectively shut down the Homeland Security Council (it was merged earlier this year into the National Security Council, run by National Security Adviser James Jones) had nothing to do with what Obama called a “catastrophic” failure on Christmas Day.

“This White House doesn’t view the Northwest [Airlines] failure as one of national security, it’s a political issue,” says the White House source. “That’s why Axelrod and Emanuel are driving the issue.”

After Obama appointed Eric Holder to be Attorney General, the man who pardoned terrorists for Bill Clinton went right to work attacking the CIA who had helped catch those terrorists in the first place. Democrats and the Obama administration repeatedly demonized the CIA and just as repeatedly threatened to criminalize their efforts to keep us safe.

[T]he CIA better change their mission to “CYA,” because our government is not going to stand behind you.”

Those concerns were echoed by a retired undercover operative who still works under contract for the agency (and asked to remain anonymous when discussing internal agency politics). Clandestine Service officers are both demoralized and angry at Obama’s decisions to release the memos and ban future agency use of aggressive interrogation tactics, the former operative said. “It embarrasses our families. You just can’t keep hitting us. Sooner or later we’re going to stop going out and working.” The official added that “a lot of offense was taken” among some Clandestine Service veterans when Obama declared that the interrogation practices the agency employed under Bush were wrong, even though the new Administration would not prosecute operatives for carrying them out.

Four former CIA directors loudly objected to Obama’s release of CIA memos. Among other things, the release of those memos – again, for purely partisan political reasons – enabled al Qaeda to know exactly what US interrogators would and would not do and prepare for our new limited and hamstrung techniques.

Now we’re left with, “Tell us what you know, or we’re give you a polite but firmly-worded scolding.”

You might not see this pathetic episode as a microcosm for Obama’s entire failed foreign policy and national security strategy, but you certainly can’t maintain the assertion that what he’s doing is working.

I started out providing a list of terrorists and attempted and successful terrorist attacks.

When Iran gets its nukes and the ballistic missiles to deliver them (and they are very close to both goals), the world will become a different place. They don’t have to launch atomic Armageddon to use their nuclear weapons; all they have to do is block the Strait of Hormuz and drive up oil prices tenfold, or send out a wave of international terror attacks. Will we go to war with them, knowing that if we do they will destroy several of our cities and kill millions of our people?

In other words, we haven’t even BEGUN to see the fruit of Obama’s failures in his “man-caused disasters.”

ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe Reports: Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., on Sunday guaranteed that if elected, Sen. Barack Obama., D-Ill., will be tested by an international crisis within his first six months in power and he will need supporters to stand by him as he makes tough, and possibly unpopular, decisions.

“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate,” Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. “And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you – not financially to help him – we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

Not only will the next administration have to deal with foreign affairs issues, Biden warned, but also with the current economic crisis.

“Gird your loins,” Biden told the crowd. “We’re gonna win with your help, God willing, we’re gonna win, but this is not gonna be an easy ride. This president, the next president, is gonna be left with the most significant task. It’s like cleaning the Augean stables, man. This is more than just, this is more than – think about it, literally, think about it – this is more than just a capital crisis, this is more than just markets. This is a systemic problem we have with this economy.”

The Delaware lawmaker managed to rake in an estimated $1 million total from his two money hauls at the downtown Sheraton, the same hotel where four years ago Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., clinched the Democratic nomination. Despite warning about the difficulties the next administration will face, Biden said the Democratic ticket is equipped to meet the challenges head on.

“I’ve forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know, so I’m not being falsely humble with you. I think I can be value added, but this guy has it,” the Senate Foreign Relations chairman said of Obama. “This guy has it. But he’s gonna need your help. Because I promise you, you all are gonna be sitting here a year from now going, ‘Oh my God, why are they there in the polls? Why is the polling so down? Why is this thing so tough?’ We’re gonna have to make some incredibly tough decisions in the first two years. So I’m asking you now, I’m asking you now, be prepared to stick with us. Remember the faith you had at this point because you’re going to have to reinforce us.”

“There are gonna be a lot of you who want to go, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don’t know about that decision’,” Biden continued. “Because if you think the decision is sound when they’re made, which I believe you will when they’re made, they’re not likely to be as popular as they are sound. Because if they’re popular, they’re probably not sound.”

2) Joe Biden calls on the American people to stick by an Obama-Biden administration even though it might look like he doesn’t know what he’s doing and his decisions are unpopular. My response: you mean the way Democrats stuck with the President in Iraq? They couldn’t wait to cut and run, to declare defeat, to try to prevent the President from bringing us toward victory with the surge strategy. They supported the war, and immediately turned against it when it began to become politically advantageous to do so. Why on earth should anybody stick with these people, given their own craven example?

Mark Joe Biden’s words. And mark mine: Obama WILL be tested, because there is no reason to believe the man has the stones to stand up to evil, or even understand it. Given his career 97% record with voting with his Democrtatic leadership (that would be Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi), there’s no reason to believe he can stand up to anything. David Freddoso spends nearly 300 pages documenting the fact that Barack Obama has never stood up to his political machine, but has merely went with the flow to suit his own political aspirations. A man with genuine moral courage wouldn’t have spent 23 years in Jeremiah Wright’s church.

Joe Biden assured us that Barack Obama will have a “spine of steel”; he has omitted the fact that the man has a guts of jello. Do you really see the guy who opposed the war in Iraq, and who opposed the highly successful surge strategy with dire predictions that he subsequently purged from his own website, would attack Iran to stop them from developing nuclear weapons? He will face the same problems that Bush faced: a lack of perfect intelligence; an apathetic Europe; a weak and corrupt United Nations; and a UN-veto-weilding Russia and China that are determined to prevent any meaningful sanctions against their Iranian ally. He won’t attack Iran, and nothing he does do will matter.

And Israel should just place its national survival in the hands of a President Barack Obama? They should just assume that this man – who has already waffled with a key Israeli issue, who has numerous friends who are anti-Semitic, who can’t be trusted – to prevent a country that has called Israel a “rotting corpse” and promising that it is “doomed to disappear” from getting nuclear weapons?

I personally believe that Israel will realize that the United States under Barack Obama will very likely not do anything to keep its most hated and hateful enemy from acquiring nuclear weapons, and will feel that it has no choice but to take matters into its own hands. They will probably do it before the election, while a very lame duck President Bush is still ostensibly in control.

I remember coming across a way to keep the perennially dumb occupied. You simply wrote, “See other side” on a card and hand it to them.

That’s the way liberals are when it comes to America and foreign policy.

Liberal foreign policy consists in two ideas:

1) It is wrong for the United States to ever act unilaterally to resolve a threat to its security.

2) The United States must act in cooperation with the international community to resolve security threats.

But what invariably happens is the “See other side” game. Because:

1) The United States is disallowed from acting preemptively to deal with threats to itself.

2) The international community never does a damn thing until it’s too late to matter.

In the minds of liberals, the United Nations has resolved crisis after crisis. In the minds of conservatives, it has allowed one genocide, crime against humanity, and security crisis to grow out of control after another.

Liberals are wrong. Conservatives are right. But as long as liberals never actually admit that they’re wrong, they feel entitled to continue to play in the game of politics and international relations. And they can continue to dismiss the reality of evil and dither around with moral equivalence.

And thus we come to the story of Russia, and its “peacekeeping operations” in Georgia and South Ossetia.

You may remember that a couple weeks ago the European Union – with France taking the lead – negotiated with Russia to stop occupying Georgia and murdering Georgian people. Displaying all the courage that France has come to epitomize, the negotiation in effect allowed Russia to remain indefinitely in the guise of “peacekeeping.” If the EU ever offers to negotiate on your behalf, if you are wise you will tell them, “No, thank you,” and then run the hell away as fast as your feet will carry you.

Well, this would be a shock to liberals, who believe in international diplomacy far more than they will ever believe in God, but the Russians haven’t been playing very nice.

The Associated Press thought for a while, and finally came up with a neutral word to say, “ETHNIC CLEANSING.”

KSUISI, Georgia – After Georgian soldiers stormed South Ossetia and killed Vitaly Guzitayev’s friend, he hid in the woods. Once the Georgians left, he set fire to the elegant brick homes of ethnic Georgians who lived nearby.

“Georgians must not return here. Ossetia is for Ossetians,” Guzitayev spat, sitting on a bench in Ksuisi two weeks later. “Let Georgians suffer. Now we are independent from them.”

Arson gangs have targeted the homes of ethnic Georgians in breakaway South Ossetia as the conflict over control threatens to erase a centuries-old ethnic mix. Since the warfare between Georgia and Russia in early August, Associated Press reporters have witnessed burning homes and looting in villages in the region.

The conflict has pitted neighbor against neighbor in this region of mountain slopes and fruit orchards where two ethnic groups have lived side-by-side for centuries: Georgians whose culture is rooted on the Black Sea coast and Ossetians whose language and customs point to the east.

According to Georgia, at least 28,800 ethnic Georgians have fled South Ossetia in recent weeks, part of a larger exodus of some 160,000 people from the conflict zone. South Ossetian officials say the region’s population of Georgians was only about 14,000 when the fighting started earlier this month.

Whatever the figure, no one disputes that there are few Georgians left in South Ossetia. And any who try to return will find many of their neighbors hostile, their language despised and their homes destroyed.

Olia Bugadze, 68, is one of a handful of ethnic Georgians left in Ksuisi. She said she hid in a corn field as Russian troops swept through, then watched as neighbors descended on her home, looted it and set it on fire. Now she camps in the ruins of her kitchen.

“I am afraid,” said Bugadze, clad in a worn-out black shirt and skirt, as she showed a visitor the destruction. “Every day they threaten me and want to drive me out of Ossetia.”

Georgian officials say some ethnic Georgian men were summarily shot by militia fighters in the aftermath of the fighting, a claim that the AP was not immediately able to independently confirm.

However, an AP reporter saw dozens of ethnic Georgians — all middle-aged or older men — who were rounded up after the fighting and held in the basements of South Ossetia’s Interior Ministry.

They were forced to haul debris on streets bombed-out by Georgian rockets and artillery. The AP saw at least three such groups escorted by armed South Ossetian policemen.

Asmat Babutsidze lived in the hamlet Achabeti, a predominantly Georgian village in South Ossetia. After the fighting ended, she said, men with guns looted and torched her home and took her to a jail in Tskhinvali.

There, she said, she was locked in a basement cell with 43 other women, most of them — like her — ethnic Georgians.

Guards, she told the AP in an interview in Tbilisi, mocked and kicked the hostages. Women were forced to sweep the glass-littered streets, she said, while men were made to bury the dead.

South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity said some Georgian civilians were detained for their own protection, not as part of an effort at collective punishment. “The Interior Ministry protected them to save their lives,” he said.

But Kokoity also said any ethnic Georgian civilians who sided with Georgian military forces will not be allowed to return. “We warned them in advance,” he said.

David Sanakoyev, a South Ossetian government official, said a total of 182 Georgian civilians were detained for their own protection and that they were eventually bused to the Georgian side. The last group of 85 men was escorted to Georgia on Wednesday, he said.

Georgian officials charge there was a coordinated campaign against ethnic Georgian civilians in Ossetian- and Russian-controlled areas.

“It was a concerted action of Russian official military forces together with paramilitaries,” Eka Tkeshelashvili, a senior Georgian government official, said at a meeting in Europe in Vienna this week.

Over the past three weeks, AP reporters have witnessed burning homes in more than half a dozen Georgian villages. On Aug. 11, an AP reporter saw looting by armed men in Georgian villages north of the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali — as Russian troops stood by.

Another AP reporter saw burning and looting of Georgian homes in at least six separate areas from Aug. 22 through Thursday: the villages of Achabetiug, Kekhvi, Tamarasheni, Ksuisi and Eregvi, as well as near the capital Tskhinvali.

With most Georgians gone, there seems to be an effort to erase even the memory of their presence here. On Thursday, a South Ossetian policeman knocked down a sign with the name of the Georgian village of Tamasheni, written in both Georgian and Latin scripts, as bulldozers razed the last remaining houses. At least three more Georgian villages have been bulldozed in South Ossetia, witnesses said.

Human Rights Watch said Ossetian militias have been involved in systematic persecution of ethnic Georgian civilians.

“They aim at pushing Georgians out of their villages, to make sure they have no place to return to,” researcher Tatyana Lokshina said.

Rachel Denber, deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch, said satellite images confirm militia attacks on ethnic Georgian villages in South Ossetia and “emphasize the need for Russian authorities to hold these militias accountable.”

A Human Rights Watch team visited five Georgian villages in South Ossetia from Aug. 12-17, she said, taking photographs and interviewing victims. The team witnessed looting and burning in two of the villages, Tamareshni and Kekhvi.

Until the last years of the Soviet Union, Georgians and Ossetians had lived peacefully. But as reforms weakened Moscow’s grip, Ossetians and Georgians formed nationalist movements, each staking a claim to their shared homeland.

After Ossetia declared its independence, Georgian forces invaded, launching a full-scale war that ended in 1992 in a Kremlin-brokered deal that divided the region. South Ossetia fell within Georgia’s borders, but operated with wide autonomy. North Ossetia came under Moscow’s control.

The uneasy peace that followed was marked by sporadic clashes, which intensified when Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili came to power four years ago, vowing to assert Tbilisi’s authority over Georgia’s separatist regions. This only stoked animosity among South Ossetians, who believe Georgia has no right to rule them.

On Aug. 7, Georgian forces launched a devastating rocket and artillery assault on South Ossetia’s capital of Tskhinvali. Russia mounted a massive military response, sending hundreds of armored vehicles south across Georgia’s border and driving the Georgians deep into their own territory.

The Russians have accused the Georgians of attempting genocide, saying the barrage targeted Tshkinvali’s hospital and residential neighborhoods. They say its tanks rolled over people alive, and fired into basements where Ossetian families cowered.

South Ossetian officials and the Russian military say they have done their best to discourage looting and arson and to protect Georgian residents of the breakaway republic, despite the popular anger at what they say was Georgia’s effort to destroy them as a people.

“We are not barbarians,” Kokoity told the AP this week.

South Ossetian officials say 1,692 civilians were killed and some 1,500 wounded in Georgia’s military assault — which devastated some Tskhinvali neighborhoods. At first Russia said about 2,000 Ossetian civilians had been killed. But on Aug. 20, it reduced that figure to 133 confirmed dead.

“The truth is no one knows,” Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, told reporters in Moscow Thursday.

In Soviet times, Ksuisi residents say, Ossetians and Georgians lived harmoniously in the prosperous village surrounded by corn fields, grapevines and orchids with peaches and apples.

Now the some 400 homes in the hamlet’s Georgian quarter appear to have been burned and looted. Of about 700 Ossetian houses, a small number — including a school — bore the marks of damage from Georgian artillery fire.

The mother of Guzitayev’s friend, Lenya Doguzov, clutched the earth and wailed in an orchard that had been her son’s grave site before his body was moved to a cemetery.

“Georgians should lie next to my son,” Yekaterina Doguzova, 70, said bitterly as she grieved alongside her daughter-in-law Zemfira Doguzova, 34.

Pavel Panikaev, 73, angrily recalled how Georgians beat him with rifle butts. “We have a right for revenge,” he said. “We will not leave Georgian houses, orchards, nothing. We will erase them from the face of earth.”

Lena Kudakhova, 67, of Ksuisi was married to a Georgian man killed in the recent fighting. Now her half-Georgian daughter is in hiding nearby, fearing retaliation, and her half-Georgian son has fled to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.

She wonders what will happen to her. “Nobody needs me in an independent Ossetia,” she said.
___
Associated Press writers Mansur Mirovalev and Maria Danilova in Moscow, and Jim Heintz and Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili in Tbilisi, Georgia, contributed to this report.

I kid you not. Even as the Russians are basically tearing new orifices into Georgia on an hourly basis, and setting up the toppling of a previously democratic government in favor of a puppet, Iran is busily working on developing their nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. Given their ability to stop traffic in the oil-critical Strait of Hormuz at will, and given their penchant for terrorism and insanity, a nuclear-armed Iran is absolutely unacceptable.

If they are allowed to develop nuclear weapons and the corresponding delivery systems, Iran will be able to launch destabilizing terrorist attacks or drive up oil prices to stratospheric levels with impunity.

But liberals will continue to play the “See other side” game with the international community.

Meanwhile, Georgia is still burning. And no one is doing a damn thing to prevent it.

According to most sources, oil could soar to as much as $400 a barell (that’s over 2 3/4 TIMES its current price of $144 as of July 2) if Iran shuts down the Strait of Hormuz.

The problem is that Iran promised the world that it would do precisely that if Israel attempts to attack its nuclear facilities.

An impending Israeli attack is itself a result of the failure of liberalism. The European Union – in refusing to implement ANY truly tough sanctions against Iran – is forcing Israel’s hand. Liberals will decry “warlike” Israel, but will be those weak, gutless, spineless liberals who refused to stand up against Iran’s nuclear program in a meaningful way that are responsible – NOT Israel. When (note: not if) Israel strikes Iran, it will be doing so as an act of sheer survival against a country which has for years promised to wipe Israel off the map as soon as it possessed the means to do so.

Genuinely tough UN sanctions, combined with a united international stand against Iran being allowed to even come close to developing nuclear weapons, would have very likely had a good chance of success. But the liberal/socialist world never learns. We are repeating the failures that led up to the Iraq invasion, during which time rampant UN corruption (the oil for food program) and corrupt countries (Russia and France) opposed any sanction that would have forced Iraq to truly declare its WMD capabilities.

Teddy Roosevelt said America should speak softly and carry a big stick. Modern liberals argue that we should throw the stick away altogether and give holier-than-thou lectures.

The primary reason the United States assumed a strong foreign policy stance – and created a powerful military to back up its foreign policy – is because two world wars and millions of American deaths served to demonstrate the fact that enemy tyrants will make us pay dearly for being weak in the face of threats against us. Yet American liberals look longingly at the demilitarized socialist states of Europe, and at their laissez faire attitude toward despicable and vicious regimes, and they want to pursue a similar approach in the United States. The fact remains, however, that it was the strength and resolve of American power that permitted the Europeans to be free to embrace their new attitudes – first from the Nazi conquest and then from Communist expansion.

But let us put this gargantuan failure of liberal foreign policy aside and instead focus on another issue which is more important to most Americans (although certainly not to Israelis facing a new Holocaust at Iranian hands): the shockingly high prices that will most assuredly ensue when Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear sites.

About half the world’s oil supply flows through the Strait of Hormuz. It is about 25 miles wide, and provides Iran with a easy choke point to stop the oil flow.

A Jun. 11, 2008 Time Magazine story titled, “How Iran Has Bush Over a Barrel” puts the U.S.’s dilemma thusly:

If wasn’t crystal clear before it certainly should be by now: the Bush Administration can’t afford to attack Iran, even if it finds it necessary to do so for the sake of preventing the very real probability of World War III. With gas already at $4 a gallon and rising almost every day, Iran figuratively and literally has the United States over a barrel. As much as the Administration is tempted, it is not about to test Iran’s promise to “explode” the Middle East if it is attacked.

The Iranians haven’t been shy about making clear what’s at stake. If the U.S. or Israel so much as drops a bomb on one of its reactors or its military training camps, Iran will shut down Gulf oil exports by launching a barrage of Chinese Silkworm missiles on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and Arab oil facilities. In the worst case scenario, seventeen million barrels of oil would come off world markets.

One oil speculator told me that oil would hit $200 a barrel within minutes. But Iran’s official news agency, Fars, puts it at $300 a barrel. I asked him if Iran is right, what does that mean?

“Four-dollar-a-gallon of gasoline only reflects $100 oil because the refiners’ margins are squeezed,” he said. “At $300, you have $12 a gallon of gasoline and riots in Newark, Los Angeles, Harlem, Oakland, Cleveland, Detroit, Dallas.”

But it didn’t have to be this way – even given gutless socialist Europe’s abject refusal to provide any real deterrant that would have made Iran think twice about continuing its nuclear ambitions.

Had Democrats allowed the United States to utilize its own massive oil resources, the United States would have been almost completely immune from this looming crisis. For information on the Democrat’s culpability in refusing to take advantage of our own energy independence, read my article available here.

The United States is literally sitting on about 170 billion barrels of oil, according to the Geological Survey and Congressional Research Service.

One of our best [short-term] prospects is Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which geologists say contains billions [the official estimate is 15.6 billion] of barrels of recoverable oil. If President Clinton hadn’t bowed to Wilderness Society demands and vetoed 1995 [Republican-sponsored and supported] legislation, we’d be producing a million barrels a day from ANWR right now. That’s equal to US imports from Saudi Arabia, at $50 billion annually.

Instead, we are currently paying over $4.00 for a gallon of gas, and we are staring into the terrifying prospect of having to pay $12 for that gallon in the near future.

One day, untold years into the future, archaeologists and anthropologists will come to realize that political liberalism invariably resulted in the suicide of nations and of Western civilization in the 20th and 21st centuries. But tragically, that day of realization has not yet arrived. And so the United States trudges along on the same path once taken by the Dodo bird.

The dodo bird will be less responsible for its downfall than the United States. The dodo bird needed something for survival it didn’t have. The United states, by contrast, refused to use what it actually had in its possession even when it needed it.

Even if the United States and the world manages to dodge the looming confrontation between Israel and Iran, the price of international oil will continue to go up, and it will continue to be subject to one crisis after another as it is produced in and passes through the world’s most chaos-prone nations. Oil will become more and more scarce as China, India, and the developing world continue to gobble it up. And the price of gasoline will contine to rise.

And the dramatic rise of the price of gasoline does not just affect our travel plans. It is directly tied in with our national productivity and our economy.

NEW YORK – Wall Street resumed its sell-off Wednesday after oil hit a new record and a bearish analyst report renewed concerns that General Motors Corp. could run out of cash.

The stock market’s pullback, which accelerated in the final hours of the week’s last full trading session, left the Dow Jones industrial average officially in bear market territory, with the blue chips having fallen more than 20 percent from their October highs.

Oil surged to new records above $144 a barrel as the government reported a bigger-than-expected drop in U.S. supplies and as investors worried about tensions in the Middle East.

The July 1 DOW figures and analysis about those figures demonstrated how market performance was exactly proportional to the rise of the price of oil. Oil is the grease that lubes our entire market structure. More expensive oil makes virtually every product more expensive even as it cuts down on American’s individual purchasing power.

And the Demcorats have for decades now resisted any effort to produce a stable long-term source of domestic oil. Even in the aftermath of the OPEC embargo that ravaged our economy in the 1970s, Democrats have refused to allow the United States to separate itself from OPEC and other foreign oil.

Hopefully, Americans will recognize the threat that Democrats are to our economy, our security, and our way of life this November. If not, I can guarantee you that America will continue to suffer the consequences of rising fuel prices until it comes to its senses and elects enough Republicans to overturn the irrational Democrat-implemented drilling bans.

I only hope that we come to that moment of national lucidity before the next crisis strangles our weakening economy. If we do not act to ensure a stable domestic energy supply in the very near future, we may well find ourselves quickly bleeding to death and desperately needing a transfusion that will not come in time to save us.